“I gave McCain and Romney less than this, combined. Am I absolved now?” Dot asks her daughter as she writes out her check as she presses it vertically on the armoire.
Roslyn looks at the donation amount and says, “I believe you are.”
I drive Roslyn back to my house, where she says her car is parked. Down Kelly Drive, through the woods, windows open to wake me up. She plays with the radio, sings along to some oldies I’ve never heard before, turning it up loud enough that we don’t have to talk. Around us, the trees of Fairmount Park, the snake of Lincoln Drive, as we go through the forest that brings us to Germantown. I want the night to be over. The whole night, from the alarm to this moment, all of it needs to be over.
It isn’t until after I drive the Beetle up the hill toward the garage and turn off the engine, that Roslyn says anything to me. And that’s after I go to open my car door but she doesn’t, and I’m forced to ask her why.
“Where’s your ride?” I ask, and she points to an old hatchback on the street. She didn’t say anything when I drove past it. Still, she makes no move to get out.
“You want me to drive you back over there.”
“No. I want you to give me the Taser.”
“What?” I ask, but I know what. I start laughing. Roslyn laughs too. But then she stops, and waits for an answer, and I realize she’s serious. And suddenly this isn’t funny anymore.
“Come on, Warren. You were a bad boy; you have to face the punishment. Families have rules. I have my dignity to consider. It’s going to hurt me to do it, but now I have to Tase you, then we’re even. You have it on you, don’t you?”
“Yeah, right. Listen, I’m so sorry about before. I thought you were a burglar.”
“I’m not,” Roslyn says. “And you shouldn’t have done that; it was very naughty. Now hand it over.”
The Taser’s in my pocket. It has been all night. Roslyn knows this; she’s looking right at it. Its bright yellow plastic handle is hanging out. She could just reach in and take it if she wanted. But she doesn’t. She wants me to hand it to her. She wants me to go out back and pick my own switch for my whupping. But she’s not my mother. I don’t know who she is, really, beyond someone who wants something.
“Give it to me, Warren. If you want to continue at Mélange,” Roslyn orders, and I, too exhausted to argue, give it to her.
Roslyn inspects it for a moment. She holds it out to the window, says “Pow,” smiling. Her other hand goes to the rearview mirror, angling to herself. She holds it straight up beside her head, squinting into the reflection of her own action-hero pose. Then she turns it on.
“Yo! You got to be careful with that.” I scoot away from her in my seat as if three inches will change anything.
“It’s a beautiful thing, Warren, to actually feel a physical representation of power,” Roslyn says. “In your hands,” she adds, and then shoots me.
—
I wake up and it’s still dark and I’m still buckled into the driver’s seat and every cell in my body has been individually extracted, beaten with a ball-peen hammer, then set afire before being shoved back to its original form. I ache in spaces between crevices I could have gone a lifetime without feeling. I’m wet all over, from sweat mostly, but in some areas probably from urine. My testicles have retreated so far into my body cavity I very well might not ever see them again. I turn to the street. Her car is gone now. It isn’t until this moment that I think, Wait, why did Roslyn come to my house in the first place?
I look over at the passenger seat to ask her. But Roslyn’s gone. There’s someone there though.
In her place, sitting next to me, is a crackhead dude. A naked one. In the seat, in the dark, in Germantown, at 2:37 in the morning, next to me, is a naked crackhead man.
The hair on his chest is thick and blacker than the brown of his skin and it runs from his nipples to his thighs. His cock is shriveled and deflated and lies in a crevice of dark wool. His chest shakes, the upward head snaps repeatedly back, violent shudders, and it’s this that forces me to look at the face.
The mouth is open as he shakes his head. He’s crying but the only sounds are gasps. There is no hole blacker than the space between his lips, and it grows wider. It swallows his words. It must. Because I hear nothing before losing consciousness once more.
12
WHEN I WAKE back up, I stay in the car, immediately start it up, and begin backing out again. It’s daytime. It’s possible I’ve just dreamt the vision. But I’m not going in the house. Not alone. Never alone. I don’t even like being alone on the lawn.
Something happened in the car at my father’s house after my boss electrocuted me, but I don’t think about it. I drive the same car to the store, back, but don’t think about it. Can’t think about it. Won’t let myself. Instead, I spend Saturday prepping the classroom for the rest of the term, go to sleep in my office studio that night and don’t open my eyes until I’m sure the sun has retaken the sky once more.
I don’t leave the art trailer. I don’t use the lights. I don’t want Roslyn to know I’m here, or any of her followers. I only go out to use the porta-potty after I’ve checked to make sure there’s no one around. I pull the blinds closed so the dim light of my computer screen isn’t visible to anyone wandering through the camp. I see the others, the rest of the resident staff, out there walking around. I go to the window and watch them pass. So many couples; with school out they stroll the grounds, holding hands. I hear their music, their laughter. Then late Sunday afternoon, I hear someone try to open up my door. I manage to kick the blankets I’ve been sleeping on under the lectern before the keys unlock it the whole way.
Spider’s standing there.
“I knew he was in here. I knew it. I’m like fucking psychic. This is some telekinesis-level shit.”
“What are you doing here?” Sunita Habersham, trailing behind him, thinks to ask me. I don’t look at her. I’m tired of looking at her. I’m disgusted with my lusts and desires. Testing this theory, I steal a glance. Yes, Sunita Habersham’s so beautiful. But so what? There have to be other attractive women of similar interest to me on the surface of this planet. There have to be other women with whom Tal could form a maternal bond. This reoccurring notion, this desperate belief that Sun is my sole avenue to secure romantic love, is obviously absurd.
“I’m squatting,” I tell her, and give up all pretense. I pull the blankets back out from under the podium, put them back into the shape of a bed, lie down.
“You know, my couch folds out, if you need someplace,” Spider says, but I’m fine. I like being alone. And that’s what I tell him.
I look up again, because they’re still here, making noise.
“Why are you here?” I reverse on them. “Why are you bothering me?”
“I’m going to need you to stop making sounds with your mouth hole, Warren,” Sunita insists. It’s a tone I’ve never heard her use before, both unusually firm and utterly informal. “I see the way you’re looking at me. Let’s establish something between us. Before we take this conversation any further.”
“Okay,” and behind that word comes a flood of anger. I wasn’t even looking at her, for once. I wasn’t even thinking about her.
“Good. Now listen: yes, we are really, really high right now.”
“Totally high,” Spider chimes in. “Yet not like, ‘Danger, danger, Will Robinson’ high.”
“But still, very, very high,” Sunita Habersham clarifies. “So I’m going to need you to talk slowly. And quieter. And I’m going to need you to not make any sudden movements.”
“We want your snacks. We just need to get your snacks. I know you have them. Give us your snacks and nobody gets hurt. We’ll share. Your snacks.”